Project

Life is based on monotony. The human being believes that things will never change, that we can calmly see how the days pass from our comfortable stability. But who tells you that this will always be the case?

One day you are like any other, working, waiting for everything to run its course. Although today is not going to be one of those days. The alarms sound, the people run and scream desperately, but you do not have the faintest idea of ​​where to hide. And in the end, everything collapses.

You wake up and you are totally disoriented. It is cold, colder than you ever thought you would be able to endure, and out of desperation you get the clothing of a corpse that not long ago was in the same situation as you. You have not thought about it too much, in your head the only idea that now resonates is to stay alive.

Little by little you are getting warmer and you feel how your body moves freely again. You realize that everything is covered by a thick layer of solid ice, the place is the same, but it no longer looks the same. You are alone in the depths of an icy grave, and there seems to be no one who can come to save you.

And that’s when you hear a crunch, something is moving through the ice… but those sounds can not be human.

You’re very scared, but now your mind thinks more clearly, and it keeps repeating the same thing: survive the Khion I, there is no turning back.

What is Khion I: No Return?

Khion I: No Return is a first-person survival-horror game in which cold will be your biggest enemy. Acting as Jonesy, you must escape from a base that has been destroyed by an explosion from a secret project. Having frozen every signal of life surrounding it and generating new creatures that now hunger for the survivors, this hostile environment is your last ally to combat those enemies and to survive from freezing.

Your greatest foe

The survival of Jonesy depends fundamentally on two elements. Your health, which descends when attacked by an enemy, or if it reaches a situation of extreme cold.

In this way, we will also have a body temperature system that will vary depending on the place or the elements with which we interact. As we lose heat our movements will become slower and clumsier, making us an easier target and even causing us to die frozen.

Heat will be a scarce commodity, and our survival will depend on how we manage it. We can get close to heat sources such as stoves or boilers to help us cope with the cold and we will have tools to fight against this constant evil.

A powerful weapon

Cold is not a common enemy. It is invisible and implacable, so specific tools have been designed to face it.

Jonesy wears a suit destined to protect her from the most extreme temperatures. It is made with insulating materials to provide her with a constant shield, since with conventional clothes she would not be able to survive more than a few seconds. In addition, it incorporates a body heating system that the player can activate to generate an increase of additional temperature in exchange for a small amount of battery.

This battery will be consumed as the player makes use of the Heating, the Flashlight, or the Thermal Vision, and it can be recharged in the Charge Stations distributed throughout the map.

The Bracelet, which is incorporated in the suit, grants the player Thermal Vision. This allows you to obtain information about the temperature that the elements of the environment give off by means of colors, helping us to guide you through the game and identify the sources of heat and cold, as well as the enemies that are patiently lurking.

Disturbing creatures

Besides the cold, we have other enemies that we will face.

These creatures will be one of the obstacles that Jonesy will have to face in order to escape. They are intelligent, they are fast, and they are moved by the absolute desire to take away our heat and end our life.

We are working hard to develop the intelligence of the enemy, so that the encounters are dynamic and generate different situations. The player can flee and hide to try to confuse them, use tools to distract them and create windows of opportunity or ambush them using the environment, thus generating indirect combat between the player and the enemy.

Use the environment in your favor

The game takes place in a complex that until now was intended for scientific research, but also served as housing for all its workers. In this way, although the story takes place inside a building, a variety of environments will be presented, such as the Medical area, the Maintenance area or the Recreation area, among others.

When playing within a context known to Jonesy, the player will have a map of the area that will give him the necessary vision to be able to reach the place he needs at any moment, and in addition, the different rooms will be connected by ventilation ducts that can also be used to move and hide, although when we get into them we will know the place where we entered, but not where it ends. This does not mean that the shortest path is the fastest, or the safest.

Thanks to this knowledge of the environment, we want to encourage an indirect fight against the enemies. The thermal vision will have a fundamental role: to locate the creatures, as well as the escape routes or elements that help us generate strategies when facing them or avoiding them.

In this way, the environment is not only the place where the story develops, but it will also be an obstacle to overcome in order to get away, as well as a powerful ally when it comes to facing the dangers that await.

Explore and craft

The exploration is a very important element of Khion I: No Return since it will be fundamental to obtain scarce materials that later will be able to be used to manufacture new resources.

The player will have to administer these resources and decide what he wants to invest them in, depending on if he wants to use them to guide encounters towards stealth and generate situations of distraction, or if he prefers to spend them to obtain items, such as ammunition or health, more focused on direct encounters.

Crafting is planned in such a way that these resources are not vital to advance in the game, but they will give Jonesy a great advantage and increase her chance of survival, allowing the player to manage them based on their preferences or whatever they consider more useful depending on the situation.

Combat weapons

Weapons are one more tool, but resorting to them will have a high cost of difficulty and will reveal the position of the player, making them the last option because of all what their use entails.

To endow them with realism and make clear the presence of the cold and how it influences the mechanics, we have worked in the aiming and the recharging of the weapon.

Depending on the temperature of Jonesy aiming will be more or less precise, since the lower the temperature is, the more the pulse of our protagonist will tremble and the harder it will be to hit the target.

Another element that is being worked on is the design of an Active Recharge System, to give extra depth to the use of weapons in the game. By means of this, in the recharge of the weapon the bullets will have to be introduced one by one and the lower the temperature, the more difficult this process will be.

Artistic vision

The artistic style of Khion I: No Return is strongly inspired by the 30s and 40s with a realistic style that aims to make it easily recognizable by the players.

The cold and warm colors, as well as the strong contrasts of light, will be the best way to guide the player. Similarly, it is intended to generate a charged and uncomfortable atmosphere where he never feels safe and feels the need to move closer to a source of heat or safe area, as the tension will encourage him to move and advance constantly.

References

The design of Khion I: No Return takes as main reference these three genres:

Terror: games in which the player is alert, feels helpless before the danger and must face situations that scare him, generating a situation of constant tension.

Survival: games where exploration and resources use and management have a lot of weight. The cold gives another approach and is a factor to take into account if we want to survive.

Realistic science fiction: games with a very personal setting, inspired by reality, but worked in a personal way that mixes the aesthetics and the genre differentiating it from the rest.